About drifting techniques and setup

Question

As I'm trying to learn about drifting setup with Vehicle Physics Pro, I have a few questions about drifting techniques and setup:

1. When the car is "in the drift", how do you know how much counter-steer is needed, or is it something you "just get it" after hours of practices?
2. What do you need to do to exit the drift? I usually get in situation where the back suddenly get traction and the car got flung into opposite direction, causing another oversteer, making a pendulum motion.
3. Usually how the suspension is tuned for drifting? Do the spring and damper got stiffer or the opposite?
4. Why open differential is usually not preferred in racing? I thought a high locking limited slip would cause understeer and less turning ability?

Answer 1

I recommend you to check out this video:

https://youtu.be/RYlUkvIk64Y?t=40

1. Counter-steer is mostly applied by the car itself. The steering wheel turns itself to the direction of the movement. All you have to do is fine adjustments while drifting. It's much more important to control the gas carefully to keep the rear wheels sliding at the optimal point. This is what you "just get it" after hours of practice. Too few gas and the car doesn't drift. Too much gas and the car does a 180 turn.
2. You must lift the gas progressively and straighten out the steering, both in a precise sequence at the precise time. It's seen several times in the video.
3. As for what I've noticed in those cars, suspension is mostly stiff but balanced between front and rear. Car is mostly flat.
4. In drifting you use fully locked differentials. They're either highly locking limited slip, or just welded gears. You don't prefer open differentials in racing in general because the inner wheel tends to lose traction when exiting the corners. You want both drive wheels to apply as much traction as possible in those situations. Note that limited slip differentials typically have two settings, one for traction and other for coasting. Therefore, the differential can behave as "mostly open" on corner entry and "mostly locked" on corner exit.

Another important setting for drifting is the steering geometry. Here you want both front wheels to point in the same direction at all times, so the steering is modified to remove any ackerman effect.